Aerial photograph of the Hoag family farm, now the Willowell
land parcel. Today, the Willowell land is on the far side of the road.
Sometime in the 1900s, Waverly Hoag inherited the farm from his parents Lisa and Charles and eventually sold it to his brother, Walter, in 1961. After Walter’s death in 1969, his widow Marlene ran the farm herself but was forced to sell off the acreage on the western side of the Bristol/Monkton road. Marlene remarried Mark Lyman, who ran the farm for several years. The 1980s saw the last of the dairy cows, and the land stopped being a working farm in the early 1990s.
Since the sale of the “Hoag farm subdivision” in the early 90s, the remaining open fields have been leased to area farmers, who have harvested hay and corn in various sections of the property for the last several years. Since the fall of 2001, the Walden Project high school has been meeting on the land. The Walden Project has also operated a community garden during the summers from 2003-2005.
In August of 2005, the Willowell Foundation purchased the 230-acre land parcel with a conditional bridge loan to be paid off by August 2007. Current uses of what is now known as the Willowell Land include small-scale vegetable production in the Walden Community Garden, leased agriculture in some of the eastern fields (primarily hay and corn production), ATV and snowmobile use along the VAST trail, hunting, the Walden Project high school within the cedar woodland area, and numerous community programs that bring students and teachers from three school districts to the property.
Click Here to learn more about the Willowell Foundation’s programs at the Willowell Land.
©2007-2008 The Willowell Foundation
PO Box 312
Bristol, VT 05443
(802) 453-6195
Website by Emily Watson-Blagden, Willowell Foundation A*VISTA 06-07
The Willowell Land
The Willowell Land: Overview
The Willowell Land, pictured at left in bird’s eye view (North is at the right side of the map), is roughly 230-acres of both open farmland and forest land comprised of a.
variety of natural communities. The Willowell Land was originally part of a 300-acre farm, first worked, according to surviving oral tradition, by the Brown family. Indeed, on an 1869 map of the area, the farmhouse that used to be part of what is now the Willowell Land parcel is marked with the name “A.J. Brown.” Sometime after 1869, the farm name changed from Brown to Hoag through the marriage of Lisa Brown to Charles Hoag.
Are you a Brown/Hoag
family member?
Do you have information about the history of this land?
